He didn’t answer right away, and when he did, it was as if this were a question he had long pondered. “I suppose I am. I suppose I’m ashamed that I had to come to you before anyone else, before anything else. I should have gone to the paper. The Challenger needs me. I should not have come to my white girlfriend first.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me again that it’s not personal?” I snapped. “It’s pretty damn personal to me! Far be it for me to—”

“Don’t do this, Roxanne. Don’t make me choose.”

“I’m not making you choose! But I want to know what’s wrong with loving me!”

“Everything. Everything! Oh, Lord! Don’t you get it? If I drive along Central Avenue with you, anyone who sees me, they’re not gonna ask, ‘Well, Terrence, tell us what was it like in Alabama during the bus boycott? How was the fight down there, Terrence? What did you think of all those folks walking back and forth to work, miles every day now for five months?’ No, they’re gonna say: ‘Who was that white woman?’ Can’t you dig it, Roxanne? That’s not what I want to talk about when I come back home!”

“Malibu isn’t home to you?”

“No.”

“Just where you get laid regularly, is that it?”

“Sure. That’s it. Just drive, will you?”

We did not speak again until I turned on Clara Bow Drive. I pulled in behind the oleander barricade and got out of the car, and without another word to Terrence, I unlocked the door and went directly through to my office. I heard the dialing of the phone, Terrence calling for a cab. I wept quietly until the tears seeped between my fingers and mascara streaked my hands. I wanted him to come to me. To take me in his arms.

He knocked gently on the door. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. It depends on how much they need me at the paper.” When I did not answer, he added, “I’ll wait outside.”

“Wait wherever you want.”

“You can always tell the neighbors I’m the guy who mows your lawn if you need a reason for me to be in this neighborhood.”

I heard him close the door, and ten minutes later I heard a cab pull up and drive away.

By the time Thelma arrived at the office, I was a sodden mess of tears, smeared makeup, red eyes, and mussed hair. Still blubbering, I told her about Charlie’s phone call, and that he was being fired.

“All right,” she said, “so Charlie’s on the rampage. I’m not sorry to lose him for a client, are you?”

“No, but he might be dangerous now.”